


Tint tomorrow with prophetic ray

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Mental Instability, Paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7548781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.</em> - Lord Byron</p>
<p>Bosworth falls differently, and a King crowned a King remains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tint tomorrow with prophetic ray

Richard of York gave battle-

Valiantly?

Viciously?

In vanity?

Perhaps.

But not in vain.

**Red**

He has Margaret Beaufort brought before him, when the dust has settled. 

Her son was killed on the field, and Richard made certain to find the body - the boy spent so much of his life in exile that no one could possibly know what he is supposed to look like, which would make it so desperately easy for some lost Lancastrian loyalist to throw a likely lad up as a false Tudor, and raise a rebellion.

Richard's hold on his throne is not so stable, even in the wake of victory, for him to risk an uprising. 

So he brings Margaret Beaufort before him, and has her confirm what he has suspected for some time before all of court - before Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters.

"You had my nephews killed," he says, somehow hoping that she will deny it, so that he might one day find Edward's sons.

( _Edward named his son Richard, not George._ It had been for their own father, Richard knows that, but he had still been drunk with pride when Edward told them what he was to name his younger boy.)

"They would have been murdered even without Lancastrian intervention," the madwoman spits, struggling against her shackles, turning her face to God. "Everyone knows you meant to kill them! Why else bring them  _both_ to the Tower!"

To control the Woodvilles, to control Edward's claim to his father's throne, to  _control._ Not to harm - they were his blood, Edward and Richard, even if they were bastards and not princes. 

"To protect them," Richard says, wishing Anne were here to say these things - she had a way of convincing people of the truth, something he knew she didn't even realise was in her power. She was her father's daughter in so many of the best ways, and he aches with her loss even more than he aches with his wounds, her loss and their Edward's. "From the likes of  _you,_ Lady Stanley - but I laid my trust in the wrong hands, and my  _nephews_ paid the price."

" _Usurpers_ ," Lady Margaret hisses, tears now flooding her too-wide eyes. "The throne was never theirs to claim, bastard or not! No more than it is  _yours!"_

"The throne is mine now," Richard says, "and your son is dead. You helped him raise an army, Lady Stanley, committed  _treason_ \- I cannot show you any more leniency. Surely you will not go to your death with my nephews' murders on your conscience, unconfessed?"

"What I confess before you murder me is not for your ears," she says, "but for my confessor's. I have no more words for  _you,_ Richard Plantagenet, none at all!"

**Orange**

Richard wanted the crown from the moment Edward dies, he admits that, but not like  _this._

He does not know how he wanted it - how else would he ever reach the crown, without destroying his nephews, his nieces, as he did? - but it was not this.

The bodies are still whole enough to be recognised, when they are found. Richard has them wrapped in white silk, and laid in a padded cart and covered over with velvet, the same reddish-orange as a queen's coronation robes, and he brings them to Grafton House, to their mother.

She screams just as loud as Anne did, over their Edward, and Richard finds that he cannot breathe. 

Somewhere, in the tangle of grief and wildness that overtakes them all, Elizabeth's eldest son comes forward, with Anthony Rivers' face and Elizabeth's pride. He bows and offers thanks, but his face is as haughty as ever his mother's was in the face of George's mockery when he requests, with perfect politeness, that Richard leave. 

He complies - he remembers Anne's impossible pain over their Edward, remembers choking back his own so that he could tend her hurts, and remembers how much more difficult it was to bear when those they hated were near.

The Woodvilles have good cause to hate him, Richard knows, and so he presses gold into Thomas Grey's hands, to pay for Edward and Richard's funerals, and a written request that they be brought to York, and buried with their grandfather.

He has no right to do more, not when his own ambition caused their deaths as much as any order issued by Mad Margaret Beaufort.

**Yellow**

Edward would have loved the pageantry of a victorious court, Richard thinks. Anne would have liked it less - she had oddly austere tastes, for a woman from such wealth and splendour, Dowager Princess of Wales turned by new marriage and by politicking and kingmaking Queen of England, who liked no clothes so much as a fine linen nightgown. 

He had loved those nightgowns on her, too, for the near-transparency of them which revealed the slender lines of her back, the soft pouch of her belly, the weight of her hips and thighs. She had gained a little weight while carrying their Edward, on her belly and breasts and hips and even her thighs, and he had loved it as much as she bemoaned it. 

He has one of her nightgowns still tucked under her pillow - it smells of her favourite scent, he thinks, even though he knows the smell must surely be faded - and has Edward's toy sword tucked behind the shield of his arms, above his desk in his study. Silly things, sentimental, but all he has left of them.

Margaret and Edward, George and Isabel's children, are a little comfort - the Woodville girls likely would be too, if he could prevail upon their mother to send them once more to court - but it is not enough. The only true respite is work, and so Richard calls his parliament, sends forth ambassadors, and sets to ruling.

Anne's ghost will haunt him from the moment he names another woman his wife and another boy his heir, and he does not blame her. There is part of him that welcomes it, if only to have her by his side again, to tell him when he is overreaching.

**Green**

There is a rebellion. Of course there is.

There are bloodlines by the dozen which might lay claim to the crown - Edward of Warwick has the north behind him, claiming that as the son of the last undisputed York king's eldest brother, Edward's claim supersedes Richard's own. 

But Richard is a man, anointed and crowned, and rich pickings as a widower without legitimate issue. Edward is only a boy, the child of a would-be usurper attainted for treason. What little stir of rebellion there is for Edward is easily dissuaded, with the promise that he be restored to Clarence, that Warwick go to little Margaret since her brother has no need of it, that they both will marry in England to prevent such glorious wealth falling into foreign hands.

The Woodville girls, well, Richard keeps close watch on them - Elizabeth, Edward's oldest daughter, is more beautiful than her mother, and has something of the charisma that made everyone love Edward so well, but she knows better than to risk rising. He would have to kill her - and it would break his heart anew, to kill Edward's favourite girl - and in remaining loyal, she may yet become Queen.

Just not Queen of England. 

Negotiations with Portugal are part of the problem, part of the reason that there are so many rumours of discontent this winter, and Richard longs for Anne more than ever, as talks roll on indefinitely. Manuel de Viseu is a magnificent prospect for any woman, particularly one of such questionable legitimacy as Elizabeth, and the in-fighting in the House of Aviz is worse even than it was in the House of York, from Richard's perspective. Edward's girl as Queen of Portugal would be a fine thing, and may even go some way toward restoring peace between himself and the Woodvilles. 

He wishes Anne were here. He wishes their Edward were here. 

He wishes he did not need to ride to war again, but there is a rebellion - a Neville, trying to prove himself the Kingmaker's heir, as though the Kingmaker's heir does not lie cold in her tomb at Westminster.

It seems that the promise of Clarence and Warwick for George's children is not enough, when the crown is in play. Richard wishes he did not understand that quite so well.

**Blue**

He used often wear blue, before mourning blacks, mourning for Edward and  _Edward_ and Anne, and it feels strange to wear blue once more.

Anne used dress Edward in blue, too, because Edward had his colouring, even if he had Anne's face. Rich blues,  _like the night_ _,_ Anne used say, as she fussed at Edward's collar before turning to do the same to Richard's cuffs,  _when your father spirited me away to sanctuary._

The sky had been almost black that night. Richard remembers it as though it were yesterday - indeed, sometimes it feels as though it is only a day since he freed Anne from George's jail, sick with fear that their kingly brother would choose George's side, dizzy with joy at the prospect of finally marrying Anne. Sometimes it feels as though he will wake up to George hammering on his door, demanding to know what he  _thinks_ he is doing in stealing George's most valuable ward, George hardly giving him time to dress before dragging him to Edward's chambers to hash it out before the King. 

But that is all so long ago. All are gone, save for Richard, and for George and Isabel's children, and Edward's maybe-widow and certainly children. He wishes he was still in black, for all that are gone, but he is to meet his next queen today, and he cannot mourn while welcoming her to court.

Joanna of Portugal refused him, citing her desire to enter a nunnery, and he had not the heart to force her hand. Her cousin for Elizabeth is enough, and if the lad does not come to the Portuguese throne, well, Richard has given York to his nieces, remade the House of Woodville into a branch of the House of York, commissioning Rivers arms bearing the Plantagenet rose for his nieces to use. 

Catherine Woodville, Dowager Duchess of Buckingham, was considered, as a means of bringing both the Rivers and the Lancasters into line, but she is not the right choice - little Margaret for the new little duke, that will do, uniting York and Lancaster by slightly sideways means. 

Someone suggested the Castillian Queen, but she is discounted out of hand without much consideration - she is too much a Spaniard to ever be Queen of England, and would never forsake her throne to take one at Richard's side besides.

So, a Hapsburg or a Valois, everyone said, because he must cement himself as true king and to do so he must have a royal bride of the highest pedigree in Europe.

Or... He could wed an Englishwoman, a woman of heritage almost as exalted as his own, a woman from a family that has been more loyal to the House of York than even its own sons, a woman widowed and left with a baby daughter as proof of her fertility.

Elizabeth Howard's accent has a similar lilt to Anne's, her face a similar shape, and it is a relief that Richard will not have to find new things to entice him to his wife's bed. 

She is wearing red - Howard red,  _Lancaster_ red, and he almost takes it for a bad omen, but for the sudden knowledge that Anne would chide him for such things. She had become suspicious to the point of paranoia about Elizabeth Woodville, but she had always found his worries amusing, and would have told him not to be so silly, that  _kings_ did not believe in such omens.

Lady Elizabeth bobs a curtsy with as much uncertainty as Anne had, when first he presented her to Edward as Duchess of Gloucester, and it calms him just enough.

**Indigo**

The Nevilles are displeased that he is not keeping Edward of Warwick as his heir, the Nevilles are displeased that he is marrying again and thereby somehow sullying Anne's memory, the Nevilles are always  _fucking_ displeased, and so Richard ignores them. It is easy, really, to ignore them, when he has more pressing issues to attend to.

Edward's little Elizabeth sails for Portugal with all the fanfare of a legitimate princess early in the year, when the seas are still choppy - her mother will doubtless whistle the winds to calm, everyone says, and Richard finds that he does not care whether Elizabeth Woodville is a witch or not - and Elizabeth Mortimer, née Howard, comes to stay at court to await their wedding in the same week. It is so busy that Richard does not have time to even think about any Nevilles but Anne and Edward, and George's children, and they are Plantagenets, really, so they do not even count.

He always has time to think of Anne and Edward, and George's children are always underfoot.

He wonders if his children by Elizabeth Howard will have his colouring and her face. He wonders if little Margaret and George's Edward will take to his children by Elizabeth Howard as well as they had to his Edward, his and Anne's.

Elizabeth Woodville smiles at him, with her daughter Cissy at her side, and Richard wonders if he has been wrong to forgo worrying over whether or not the woman is a witch. Anne was always so sure, after all.

**Violet**

He weds Elizabeth Howard on a sunny day in April, both of them in silver and white and green. It is a grand affair, the whole realm turning out, and Richard spends much of the day - between dances, because despite the injuries he suffered at Bosworth he can still dance - with the ambassadors who litter his court, trying to understand where best to marry his other nieces, Edward's other daughters.

Ned Warwick, as they call him about court, is another issue, one Richard will consider in more depth when he cannot feel George's ghost shadowing his shoulder, but he cannot be allowed a powerful foreign bride - even if she does not help him raise an army to take the throne, Richard will not risk another Jaquetta of Luxembourg. 

The feast runs too long, but Richard's subjects and few friends take such delight in it that he cannot deny them. His bride is hardly by his side all day, dancing here with her brother and there with Thomas Grey and beyond with young Buckingham, hardly more than a boy.

They all seem such children. Richard is only thirty-four but feels a Methuselah, when everyone else can laugh and he can only feel the weight of their Edward's body in his arms whenever someone wishes him a bushel of healthy sons.

Anne is there in his bedchamber to greet him, when he retreats for a moment alone before he must bed his new wife.

"Do not fall at this hurdle, husband," she says, cold hands on his chest when he pulls his shirt over his head. His nightshirt is just beyond her, and for now, he cannot bear to reach for it, because to do so would be to lose her touch. "Edward and I will await you, but you must do your duty to the crown."

"I miss you," he says, hands finding the soft over-full swell of her hips, just for a moment. "So much so that I cannot breathe."

"Oh, Richard," Anne sighs, folding against his chest, and she is so  _cold._  What can he do to warm her? "I am always with you, but you must do better than this."

"Than to grieve for my wife and my son?" 

"I made a king of you, Richard of Gloucester," Anne says, a wisp of wintery absence in the dying warmth of the spring day. "Do not throw it away over something so useless as sentiment."

Elizabeth Howard, now Elizabeth Plantagenet, gasps when he pulls his nightshirt over his head to reveal his scars, his crooked shoulder - smashed by a mace and set badly, so it twists and aches - and Richard almost leaves that instant. If she cannot look upon him without horror, how is he to trust her as his wife?

Anne didn't flinch when he pulled his shirt off, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I never cared about Richard III until I watched Aneurin Barnard play him, smh.


End file.
